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In the last few years, the international community has made incredible strides towards addressing climate change and sustainability at a global level. Recently adopted international frameworks such as the 2015 Paris Agreement and the 2030... Read more

Recovering water, energy, nutrients and other precious materials embedded in wastewater is an opportunity for cities to transition to the circular economy and contribute to improved water security. The call comes from a new report on reuse opportunities by the International Water Association and OFID (the OPEC Fund for International Development).
Titled, The Reuse Opportunity: Cities seizing the... Read more

Projections suggest cities will swell at an astonishing pace – but whether that means our salvation or an eco-disaster is by no means certain by John Vidal
The 1960 street map of Lagos, Nigeria, shows a small western-style coastal city surrounded a few semi-rural African villages. Paved roads quickly turn to dirt, and fields to forest. There are few buildings over six floors high and not many... Read more

Urban development changes storm patterns and rainfall amounts, two new papers suggest.
The research highlights the need for urban planning and infrastructure design that considers how the landscape will affect the weather.
In two separate papers, teams led by Dev Niyogi, Indiana state climatologist and professor in the agronomy and earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences departments at... Read more

Ben Lambert, a 34-year-old who manages fundraising efforts for a number of nonprofits, lives in one of Denver’s densest residential neighborhoods: Capitol Hill. The area surrounds Colorado’s capitol building and is home to museums, concert venues and restaurants. The housing stock consists mostly of apartment buildings and tightly packed homes.
Ben’s apartment building has a small off-street... Read more

Every city in the U.S. has a chief elected leader. Many cities have a chief technology officer. Several cities have a chief resilience officer. But, how many cities have a chief scientist?
In an era of climate change and limited resources, isn’t this an idea whose time has come?
I suggested this idea at the recent CitiesIPCC 2018 Conference in Edmonton, Canada before a friendly audience of mayors... Read more

Notably, no U.S. cities featured in the top 10
LONDON, March 15 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Singapore remains the world's most expensive city for the fifth consecutive year, with Paris, Zurich and Hong Kong following closely behind, according to the Worldwide Cost of Living Survey published on Thursday.
Low inflation meant Tokyo - the most expensive city until 2013 - dropped out of the top 10... Read more

Authors:
Franz Gatzweiler, Executive director of the URBAN HEALTH AND WELLBEING: A SYSTEMS APPROACH Programme of the International Council for Science (ICSU), Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, China Email: gatzweiler02@gmail.com
Jieling Liu, PhD candidate in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon,... Read more

The San Francisco Bay Area’s flood risk maps, produced by FEMA, use satellite radar to calculate city-by-city threats. One thing they don’t take into account, however: Bay-side cities aren’t just vulnerable to melting ice caps. They’re also sinking — sometimes at a rate of about a half-inch per year.
That’s the alarming conclusion from researchers at UC Berkeley and Arizona State University.... Read more

According to the World Bank’s recent report, over half of the world’s population is unable to access basic health services. This is a stark reminder of the persistent inequity that exists across the globe, and reiterates the urgency of accelerating progress toward universal health coverage (UHC) as a key driver of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
No doubt, there have been... Read more

It's been over a year now since all 193 countries of the United Nations adopted by acclamation the "New Urban Agenda," the outcome document of the Habitat III conference held in October 2016. The historic nature of that achievement is hard to over-state: for the first time, we have a world-wide agreement embracing walkable mixed use, mixed transportation modes, polycentric regions, diversity and... Read more